To provide reliable performance of holographic data storage drives, it may be necessary to perform periodic calibration of the writing and reading parameters for drives depending upon various conditions (e.g., environment, media, etc.). For example, when data is written on holographic media, the laser power may need to be adjusted for optimum read/write performance. Prior art solutions typically do not dynamically optimize the laser power for different media and environmental conditions, resulting in less than optimum performance. In addition, prior art solutions do not provide a mechanism to store the calibration information separate from the data recording layer on the same physical media.